What is the differences between individual and social satisfaction according to Marcuse?

In the words of Marcuse himself: 'Our civilisation [sic] is, generally speaking, founded on the suppression of instincts.' Sex produces the energy, and it is repressed so the energy can be channeled into progress - but the price of progress is the prevalence of guilt instead of happiness. "Progress", for Marcuse, is a concept to rationalise the perpetuation of the prevailing system into the future, an end to which the happiness of people in the present (and the pleasure principle is all about the present) is sacrificed.





Marcuse argues that 'the irreconcilable conflict is not between work (reality principle - life without leisure) and Eros (pleasure principle - leisure and pleasure), but between alienated labour (performance principle - economic stratification) and Eros.' Sex is allowed for 'the betters' (capitalists...), and for workers only when not disturbing performance. He believes that a socialist society could change this by replacing the 'alienated labor' with "non-alienated libidinal work" thus resulting in "a non-repressive civilisation based on 'non-repressive sublimation'". In other words, Marcuse believes that a socialist society could be a society without needing the performance of the 'poor' and without as strong a suppression of our drives as in today's society.





The argument depends on the assumption that repression is largely an historical phenomenon (history of humankind is that of repression). Marcuse concludes that biological repression itself is not the problem but that our troubles stem from the additional 'surplus repression' produced by the specific historical institutions of our own period.

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